ultrabook x Inventor 2015

[dimitri]

Does any one know about Ultrabook performances in Autodesk Inventor 2015 ?

I imagine Intel i7-4500U 4th generation with HD 4400 graphics, like those XPS 12 and Lenovo Yoga 2, with 8 GB of RAM DDR3 and 256 GB SSD. Portability is important right now and I don't have it with my heavy and old system which is 17 in, weighting nearly 15 pounds...

I am not a designer, I will use it only for small changes or verification of assemblies with maximum 25000 elements. I use it also to FEA simulation.

I was able to do the job very well on an old workstation, a Dell precision M90 with Quadro FX 2500M, Core 2 duo processor at 2.33 GHz, 3.3 MB usable memory, and a SSD, but it was only DixrectX 9c and Inventor 2015 does not support it anymore.

[dgorsman]

Those HD graphics are built into the CPU chip.  That means it uses system RAM, so only 8GB with OS, Inventor, *and* graphics all taking a chunk?  I'd say pretty dodgy.

[tmoney2007]

25000 elements and FEA on and ultrabook isn't going to work out well for you. The power just isn't there. It doesn't particularly matter if you are making minor changes to large assemblies, you still have to open them.

Look into the Dell Precision M3800.  Workstation graphics and a true quad core processor in a thin and light package.

Or look at the Dell Precision M4800, it could pull that kind of thing off and it only weighs like 6 lbs vs 14.

[dimitri]

tmoney2007, that is the example I would not go into, it is not because of performance that obviously is expceptional, it is because a basic M3800 costs merely $ 4500 directly from Dell's site here in Brazil... And basically we are running stations in my office with ATI card games and they are succesfully running Inventor with great performance. We have already abandonned professional graphics cards here since last year.

What is intriguing is that I cannot find yet anything about convertibles and their performance with Inventor, what I do know is that HD 4400 performs 20% better in 3DMark06 than my old Precision M90 with FX 2500M. And I am able to run those assemblies nowadays with only 512 MB in video card + 3,3GB RAM on system, that is why I believe that maybe a XPS 12 or a Lenovo Yoga 2 would fit reasonably. Anyway, I would prefer a convertible with discrete graphics, but it simply does not exist!

[tmoney2007]

Bad example then. From what I've seen, Inventor 2013 started to be much more resource intensive, I doubt that 2015 is much better.

I don't know that 3DMark06 is a great benchmark for workstation graphics. It may depend significantly on what you are willing to deal with. I know that processor intensive parts of inventor will probably run fine because it only uses one at a time anyway, but I don't know that I'd go with integrated graphics for a workstation if I could help it.

Have you considered keeping your laptop with you but having a tower that you can remote desktop into when you need to do intensive tasks?

[dimitri]

hi dgorsman,
This kind of system uses only 512 MB for video, remaining so 7,5 GB available for Windows and Inventor. From my point of view, Inventor is not video memory demanding, as it usually does not use textures. My current video card is a FX 2500 M with the same amount of memory and I see it is always free. I think video card needs a good processor and fast memory access to be effective in Inventor, but its amount of memory is not that important.

What I can see from here, is that HD 4400 is somewhat equivalent to the old Quadro 600 in terms of game performance. That is ok for me, but I am not sure if it really performs equal in CAD, maybe the behavior in games is different. Source: http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu

[blair]

I use an Alienware Mx17 for off-site, works great. With the move from OpenGL an number of releases ago there is no need for a Quadro graphics card. Just go for a good "Gamming" laptop. I went with RAID0 drives on mine, (now a couple of years old) as they are faster than the single base drive. Nvidia graphics card and 16Gb of memory and a iCore7 CPU

[4donwan4]

I cannot comment on the specific model and what you are looking at. There is a document for the system requirements and a certification site for hardware.

System Requirements:

Inventor 2015 System Requirements

Certified Hardware

Recommended hardware

The other thing is we also recommend the SSD drives as this will give you better performance over the standard ones.

Regards,

Don